


All the Secrets of October

by thatdragonchic



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, Mentions of Claudia Stilinski - Freeform, Secret Relationship, Stiles loves to bake, Stydia, mentions of Stiles family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-20
Updated: 2016-08-20
Packaged: 2018-08-09 23:14:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7821022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatdragonchic/pseuds/thatdragonchic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What is this?"<br/>"Est Ist Liebe. it is love."</p>
            </blockquote>





	All the Secrets of October

**Author's Note:**

> This started as writing aesthetics and turned into something very different

Across the entrance was the stove and the sink, where Stiles was standing, stirring a large wooden spoon in a tall brass pot, something sweet like apples scenting the air. He was in a large cotton sweater that hung off his limbs loosely but, black and covered in ghosts and pumpkins, with burnt orange joggers- Lydia can’t help but smile at the sight. There’s even music playing from the radio on the windowsill above the sink, something that sounds like the classical music station (what a  _ dork)  _ but she can also hear voices- maybe it’s an opera. Stiles Stilinski and opera were two things that she didn’t think go together.

Lydia wonders if this was something remnant from his memories of his mother. She wonders if Claudia would do the same thing on October weekends. She wonders if this is a part of her that she left behind in him, if maybe it wasn’t totally conscious. Lydia can’t help but wish she had known his mother at one point or another, maybe just the way his father lights up a bit when he thinks of her or the way Stiles speaks so fondly of her. She wishes she knew her. Glancing back at the wall she was leaning on she notices a picture of their small family: Claudia, John and a new born Stiles in a hospital that was definitely not Beacon Hills Memorial. She smiles and glances back to Stiles, he looks like her. A lot like her. Has the same nose and hair color, with his father’s eyes and build. She thinks that maybe if Claudia were there, they’d be standing side by side right now and maybe she would be stirring whatever was in that pot and he would be baking the way that he tends to do. Claudia would be ever proud of her son- he became strong. Lydia knows it, he became strong. 

“Announcing yourself anytime soon or just gonna stare at my cute ass?” he teases and she blinks before grinning.

“Mmmm I’ll just stare at your cute ass.”

Stiles laughs and grabs the oven mitt from the counter, the kitchen being set up in a way that one would walk in and the table is in the space to the left, then to the right was a short counter, and then beside was the fridge, across from that space was a sink and the oven. Somewhere beside the kitchen table was a doorway into the dining room. The house was large, the kitchen was spacious. She watches him pull out Pumpkin squares, they smell heavenly.

“You’re in a mood,” she assesses.

“What kind of mood?”

“Mm… are you sad?”

“No, I don’t have a reason.”

“Then what’s with the baking and the… what’s in the pot?”

“Apple cider. I was at my Nana’s last weekend.”

“I recall, yes.” He was there every Sunday for church, three hours north in a small Polish centered town, with a big church and his Nana’s infamously successful horse ranch and picking orchard. Of course he took time to pick apples, it was free to his disposal. 

“I’m making apple cider.”

She nods.

“You okay?”

“I don’t know, you look cozy.”

“I like the fall.” he smiles. “We should go for a walk later.”

She thinks that the light falls perfectly on his form, and she smiles, stepping further into the Kitchen. “Yeah we should. But who's to say it would be safe?”

“Does it matter? Walks are nice.”

“Not if you get kidnapped.”

“Hey, I’m the pessimist here, you can’t be negative about it.”

“That’s a rule now?”

“Yes.” 

She laughs softly, taking careful steps into the kitchen, approaching him as he stirs the cider until she’s hovering at his side, her hands looping to hold his shoulder and she leans up very slowly to press a kiss to his warm cheeks. It was sort of chilly, the window is open. There’s a crisp smell to the house. Looking around there’s decorations hung about that she knows weren’t there before, little pumpkin lanterns along the curtain above the sink, fall oriented rubber stickies along the kitchen door. It all just screamed a sense of home, it made her wonder if this how life with him would be if they lived together anytime in the future.  _ If we were married  _ her mind adds, she thinks she likes the thought of being married to Stiles.

Glancing up he’s smiling sweetly, humming along to whatever is playing on the radio- something that she never thought he would know. She can’t even really pinpoint the artist. “You know it?”

“You don’t know this opera?”

“I can’t recall it no.”

“It’s from Turandot, a 19th century play completed before the composer's death in 1924, really quite powerful. This song is from Act III.”

“What’s it about?”

“Its about a man who wants to marry the cold princess Turandot but she refuses to marry him. She offers him challenges along the way but even as he passes, she refuses. So he offers her a deal- if she can remember his name by Sunrise of the next day, he is to die at daybreak. That is her way out of this marriage.”

“Does he die?”

“No she never figures out his name. They searched day and night, people offered him everything to just give up Turandot but he refuses. They do everything they can but find no name for him. And at dawn she’s set to step up to the Emperor's throne and she has no name. But once approaching the emperor's seat she announces that his name is  _ love.  _ Her sentence is Est ist liebe. It is love.” 

“That’s really beautiful.”

“It’s a moving story. I think it was a book actually, but they recomposed it into an Opera.”

She nods. “Well I guess now I know.” 

He smiles, tilting his head to kiss her. There wasn’t much to say and the quiet filled in all the gaps between them, that any space left between them was shuffled through with moving quiet air- nothing felt stiff or awkward, and the soft kisses he pressed to her lips were the completion of a day, that even if the sun was still rising high in the sky, she thinks that the day is complete, that she can proudly proclaim that she’d done it all for the day and that a day well done, settled on his couch with a warm mug of cider- which by the way draws his attention after a moment, the obscene popping of boiling cider and he hums with pride in his work and turns it off. “Let’s let it cool a bit, then you can have some.”

She smiles and watches as he goes to cut out more pumpkin flavored, cake like, cookie like dough and place the squares down onto a sheet. The smell is wafting and oh so wonderful, it makes her want to melt right down to the floor, curl up into one of his sweaters and stay there like an infallible child, evident of no harm, perhaps at the very end of the day curled up ready to sleep the whole world away. Wish it gone with nothing but dreams and a cozy sweater much too big for her body. The brisk breeze of october the only company she might have, and a boy in front of the couch, curled up with that mug of very warming scented cider. 

Everything felt perfect, the world stopped moving as she watched him, sinking against the counter and onto her button the floor, knee’s drawn up watching him. Her wool sweater has fallen about her shoulder, her eyes are shining childishly. She once heard that you don’t wake up until you fall in love- she thought she was in love with Jackson but she never felt awake. Yet every time she looks at Stiles it feels as if her eyes are unveiled of something, as if previously there was a mask. She felt like the weight of all things lifted off her shoulder with the breeze. He was beautiful and he was living and breathing, he woke her. 

She didn’t even mind the blaring operatic voices behind her, they seemed to sing for him like angels, praising his whole being, daring the light to fall brighter on him, illuminate him, make him one of them. Remove the pain from his shoulders, all in a blurring of a black and orange sweater with little white ghosts dotting it like polka dots almost. Stiles kneels to put the pumpkin squares in the oven and when he closes it, he joins her on the floor. 

“What are you doing down here?” 

“Admiring you.”

Stiles smiles and leans in, nuzzling his nose against her cheek. If this is what life could have been before, he’s glad it’s what it is now. He wants to tell her he loves her, that after all that happened he loves her. But he doesn’t think he can. Things were like that sometimes- that they could so easily fill the gap between their lips but the secret stayed shut between them. There was no outside source, the sun didn’t tend to shine out in the open, just in the closed quiet of kitchens and bedrooms- hushed between the spaces of person to person, hand in hand, on the kitchen floor in ridiculous autumn themed sweaters.

Lydia tilts her head and she presses a soft kiss to him, and her eyes flutter, watching him melt against her, the sorrow of his furrowed brow seizing to a more relaxed feature, the creases of his forehead resting back into the skin. She lets the back of her hand to caress his face. If Fall meant death of all things, then this young man here was the death of her, but the light of her life, the glow that protruded from her stomach and exuded from her being. It was the light that should fade with winter but rather it was the light that only grew stronger in bitter cold and darkness- why should she hide it when everything was in the palm of her hand? But she knew the answer to that and so did he. 

“We should go for a walk.”

“The way that friends do,” she whispers and he looks perplexed. She doesn’t mean it but she does. It was a weird emotin.

“We’re not friends you know that.”

“But nobody else does.”

“And that’s okay. Sometimes Secrets are okay.”

“And why can’t secrets be out in the open?”

“Because if all the secrets of the universe were put on display, what would people ever make of them?”

“You’re always thinking of things like that. Secrets of the universe and shit.” She wasn’t one to curse but she couldn’t stop it. He did that to her.

“You might learn a few secrets yourself if we go on that walk.”

“What if something happens?” 

“After the dread doctors? All the creatures have burrowed in their nests to hide. We’ll be okay.” 

“Yeah…. We’ll be okay.” She pauses. “What is this?” she finally asks, gesturing between them. She knew they were a secret thing, but she wanted an answer, just wanted to hear him confirm it- even if she’s asked before, she just likes to know that he’s not using her. That this isn’t something he’s hiding so he can impress somebody else under faux impression.

“Est Ist Liebe. It is love,” he concludes softly and her eyes sparkle, they almost kiss.  _ Almost.  _

The oven dings and he stands to get the pumpkin squares out of the oven, so he stands and Lydia thinks that no matter what, life goes on. He’ll still get the dessert out of the oven, the opera will still sing and October will still be october, and he will still be an angel no matter how much he insists on keeping quiet about this- how he wasn’t ready to tell people. The world didn’t stop spinning but yet she wished that perhaps it would so October would last forever, just so she can sit on the kitchen floor beside him for the rest of her days. 


End file.
